Poll: Carson still No. 1 late-night host

Carson hosted "The Tonight Show" from 1962 to 1992.

(CNN) -- Ten years ago next week, Johnny Carson gave up the chair on NBC's "Tonight" show and went quietly into retirement.

But the man who made Carnac the Magnificent, Art Fern and his razor-sharp nightly monologue part of the national landscape is far from forgotten.

According to a new Gallup Poll, Carson is ranked the best late-night talk show host of all time.

The poll asked respondents to pick from six hosts -- Carson, his successor Jay Leno, protégé David Letterman, predecessors Steve Allen and Jack Paar, and competitor Dick Cavett.

Carson was picked by 39 percent of the poll-takers, well ahead of the 20 percent who picked Letterman and the 16 percent who chose Leno. Six percent chose Allen. Paar and Cavett barely ranked at all.

Gallup editor in chief Frank Newport was somewhat surprised by the results.

"We might expect younger Americans are more skewed towards appeal for Leno and Letterman," he said on "CNN Live Today."

RESOURCES EW.com: All about Johnny Carson

"You can see, however, Carson -- who does better in the older group -- still [has] 26 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds say he is their favorite of all time."

Many of that age group, Newport added, were teen-agers or younger when Carson left the air in 1992.

Carson recently gave an interview to Esquire magazine in which he said he had no desire to return to the late-night wars, which have heated up lately.

Letterman, piqued at negotiations with CBS, listened to overtures from ABC, which would then possibly have had to find a new time slot or role for "Nightline" and its host, Ted Koppel.

Meanwhile, despite Jay Leno's ratings success as "Tonight" host, he has come under fire from TV critics for his lackluster interviews and rimshot monologue style.

The Gallup Poll was conducted May 6-9, 2002, with a sample size of 1,012.